Photo-a-Day  (Tuesday, 18th May, 2021)

Another gud un Dennis owd beigh, keep um cumin. That bus pass must be wearing thin naew I recon. Janet will not be pleased tha'nos. Dus tha remember us kids jumping on't bus in Station Road on eaur way back wom to Aspull, bus went daewn side ut Ritz and just as it joint Crompton Street there were big gate opposite, two little pigs painted on't gate and caption said "SO THIS IS WHERE WE GO" it were rear entrance to Mark Williams, they also had a shop at bottom of th'arcade, lovely pork pies wi cowd jelly on't top. Best ever !.

I see Gee Tee's doing very well ( George Twist).
There's a bus goes to Ashton straight through from Westhoughton. Yet can't get a bus through Aspull - which I really miss.

My first job when I left school at sixteen was in Gerrard Street. I started work in a chemists further up the street on the opposite side of the road from where the photo is. Ashton was a very busy place and the market was one of the best around.

Walt is writing like that a side effect of having your Corvid jabs.

Mick, dus tha meeun Covid jab I had them all except Rickets but not the one you said mate. LANKY SPOKKEN ERE THA'NOS.

What a mind numbing prospect, Mick trying to tell other people how they should write. Talk about t’kettle cawin’ pon brunt a—se!

Mark Williams had a shop in Preston as well, on Orchard street if I remember rightly.

We can't all talk Shangrilese, that's specialist linguistics...
and it's a different way of spelling certain words too - carry on Walt it brings back memories of the past generations. It won't die out as long as you are here. ;-))

I remember those pies Walt, and I recall being told that Mark Williams had their own slaughterhouse behind the shop in Standishgate.

I remember sometime in the early fifties a lot of cattle got loose from Marks Williams slaughterhouse in the middle of the day and caused havoc in Standishgate and the surrounding area.

Dennis yes..I was in the store next door to it,I was upstairs and heard screaming,I asked someone what it was (I was very young),they explained it was the pigs being slaughtered..I was horrified.ive never forgotten that sound.

Teasy how come your always playing with the big girls.
How can anybody turn a thread about delicious old fashioned pork pies in to doom and gloom post because of hearing a baby pig being killed.

Mick, whatever are you talking about? Maybe it would be a good idea if you didn't play with anything sharp for a while and remembered to keep taking the tablets.

Mick: Try and take it easy with the sherry !
It was Maureen who posted the horrified sound of the pigs, and she is a very nice woman, not a big Girl.
And if DTease wants to play with big girls that’s up to him, all he has to do is ring me.

Mick, Teasy loves having a laugh with us "big girls". Actually, I know Maureen and Veronica personally and we are all small! But then again, dynamite comes in small packages, as do diamonds! Agreed, Dolly dear, and our Maureen?

Maureen, I began working at the Co-op on Standishgate in the late 1960s and the sounds coming from the Williams and Forshaw's abattoirs was horrific, I remember that I went vegetarian for a time until I left there. Pigs and Cattle were always escaping from those places - was it any wonder, I can't and don't want to imagine the cruelty that would have happened behind those doors, and the smell, especially in summer with flies, was awful and not just from the abattoirs waste skips but from the fellmongers yard too.

An old fashioned pork pie, Mmm. Mark William's (and other butchers) wouldn't have wasted anything they could have got from a pig carcass to mince up and put in a pork pie, then they'd boil the bones for the gel, and if they had found a way to extract the Oink, they would have put that in too. So that's where we go!

Been in that shop many times for pork pies. I seem to remember that Mark William’s was somehow related to the Baron’s who had the butchers in the Market Hall.

I didn't know there was a G Tees in Ashton, I have heard you Veronica talk about the one in Westhoughton.These two places seem to have more shops than Wigan now.

I agree Irene, what's wrong with having a laugh. Mick you need to go and find your funny bone. Teasy and Co. do make us laugh, nowt wrong with that. Life's too short to be serious all the time. It's not even that we know anybody personally...
( apart from two or three, or four, Ladies) so play nice!

Thank you John,I've just come in..saw Micks comment and was just about to tell him it was me who made that comment...and who's more miserable than Mick..also thank you Irene.
Cyril, I still can't eat meat from any animal,it's just my choice.

I don't think Mick trying to tell other people how they should write.

I might be wrong Edna, but I think there may be one in Pemberton. It's a really good store the one we have in W/H where he started out.

My first job at 15 was in Ashton, can't remember what it was called but it was wallpaper and paint store, would have been about 1965. Only worked there for 3 months. Not for me - what one earth does a 15 year old know about wallper and paint

Maureen mentions pigs screaming.
By all accounts, pigs are intelligent animals, more so than dogs evidently.
So, shortly after the slaughterhouse on Stephens way closed, I did a spell driving a fridge truck collecting intestines in barrels from abattoirs up and down the country for a bloke who rented part of the old building.
I would bring them back to Wigan to be cleaned then sold for sausage skins.
I think it was at an abattoir in Beverly, as I was sat in the wagon waiting to get loaded that I first heard this awful screeching noise.
I thought it was the conveyor belt at first, until it dawned on me that it was the pigs screaming.
Their innards were in 45 gallon drums in the back of my trailer half an hour later.
I didn't stick at the job for very long, but I doubt I'll ever forget the experience, and I very rarely eat bacon or sausages these days.

Ozy, reading your comment, I'm not surprised you don't eat sausage or bacon, after your experience. Just reading about it had an effect on me.It does make you think!!

Thank goodness there are more humane ways of dispatching animals these days,... hopefully.
Also not having a slaughter house on the doorstep as in Hardybutts at one time.

They serve food very fresh in the far east, one of the best dishes I have when I'm there is a suckling pig.
You get the whole baby pig just slit open along its belly and then squashed flat like they do with a spatchcock chicken
Another lovely family favorite is a a live fish, with knife cuts along its side then held by the mouth and dipped into boiling oil until the body is crispy, then served with udon noodles, you can tell how fresh the fish is because the head of it is still alive and you can see the eyes and mouth moving.
Prawns are another favorite fried cooked alive in beer and sesame oil, they call this dish singing prawns because of the squeaking noise the prawns make while they are cooking

They've always been a very cruel race haven't they.